Nursing Program Teaches Students to Act Like “Real” Nurses

I am really trying to understand this:

A new cap on class size in the University of Manitoba’s nursing faculty has left some students fuming after learning their studies have been put on hold.

But the faculty’s dean says the cap is meant to benefit fourth-year students, whom she says were told about the plans at their orientation in March.

Nursing students contacted the Free Press after showing up to enrol for classes last week and early this week, only to find key courses were full.

In other words, after spending thousands of dollars in years One through Three, these nursing students won’t be permitted to graduate because the nursing faculty didn’t have the foresight to plan properly for their students. Or maybe the UM nursing program is trying expose their students to real world bullying and nastiness, in the best nursing traditions of eating our young. Good role-modelling, that.

There is a justification for this, of sorts, under the category of blaming the victim:

Faculty of Nursing dean Dawna Crooks said students were told in early spring that changes were coming down the pipeline.

“They were warned that we were controlling the numbers in the courses by semester, and that if their GPA was lower, they would have more difficulty,” she said.

Oh yes, we’re only preventing the ones with lower grades from graduating. We warned them. If there’s going to be finger pointing, it should be back at the students. Et cetera. A couple of problems with this explanation. First, it implies if everyone got straight A’s, there wouldn’t be an issue. Clearly, this isn’t true: class sizes were going to be capped regardless of GPAs.  And if the UM nursing program was attempting to get rid of students it thought were going to be practising at an undesirably low level, why did it choose this back-door method of booting them out of the program? The official explanation doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in University of Manitoba Nursing or its integrity. Potential students, be warned.